One aspect of my job as Stout's Chief Technologist—and one that I really enjoy—is reviewing code bases. I get to do this somewhat regularly; evaluating code for reusability, providing basic […]

Documentation types A well-run organization that develops software, hardware, or services, requires a large amount of documentation to ensure the products and services meet their objectives and timelines of the […]

I do a lot of debugging in my work. Not only do I debug my own code, but I also help other developers with difficult-to-diagnose bugs. Most bugs are pretty […]

I've been a web developer for a long time, and one concept that always comes up is turning HTML into a PDF. It's a pretty natural request; HTML is a […]

Here at Stout we screen a lot of technical candidates. Our first step is to filter the resumes. (We have little need for glass window installers despite the fact that […]

When it comes to hiring or promoting a software engineer, communication skills can be used as the tie-breaker between two equally talented people. But that term—communication skills—is so broad that […]

One of the first “lessons learned” for novice programmers is that the time required to program the typical usage scenarios can be fairly accurately estimated, but the time required for […]

I'm not sure where it came from or how it started, but that's the euphemism we use. As in, "Can we still deploy if Joe is hit by a bus?" […]

Let’s start with this statement: You cannot accurately estimate anything you haven’t done before.     If I asked you to estimate how long it would take you to make […]

Most people focus on the work that they would do when considering whether they should pursue consulting as a career. Am I a good enough engineer or project manager or […]